Monday, 18 January 2010

I had been eyeing this wine for some time: at EUR 5.99, a very affordable off-dry Riesling by a well-known Mosel producer - and very sleekly branded, too.

S.A. Prüm, Riesling "Essence", 2008, MoselOrange peel and red apple on the nose. Same pleasant orangely tang on the palate with a squeeze of lime. There are obvious sweet and sour dynamics going on there. Not sure how much residual sugar there is, but, essentially, the medium finish tastes dry once the sweet fruit hits the juicy wall of acidity. For the record, I would place this in the halbtrocken (feinherb)category, though, frankly, who cares? At 10.5% alcohol, this is nice and quaffable - nothing more, nothing less. What's not to like?

Jenny certainly loves it and has instructed me to buy more bottles forthwith.

Mini-rant: [For those who might regard the following as an overgeneralisation, apologies in advance.]Within Germany, such wines are being passed over increasingly by consumers in favour of all that is trocken. Rieslings that are off-dry or sweeter (on paper, if not sensorially) tend to be regarded as overlysweet and dismissed with contempt as "wines for the export market". Sometimes, even legally trocken Rieslings which - to my mind - often feel more balanced with a few reconciliatory grams per litre of residual sugar are subject to sniping about their Zuckerschwänzchen. There's no accounting for taste, it seems.